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AMD has further detailed its upcoming GPU line, which includes the
entry-level R7 240 card, the double-wide R7 250 and R7 260X as well
as the R9 270X and R9 280X.

As we have previously seen with AMD's 2014 GPU lineup, the company is changing the naming of their products. The new naming scheme means
that names like Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and Radeon HD 7770 get
replaced with names like Radeon R9 280X and Radeon R7 260X. At launch
there will be the R9 and R7 categories, the former signifying AMD's
enthusiast level products, while the latter signifying AMD's
mainstream level products.

At the top will be the R9 290X, which will not be launching today,
and below it we have the R9 280X, R9 270X, R7 260X, R7 250, and R7
240. The latter 5 cards are all launching this week and AMD has
released the complete specifications, which you see below.

AMD
CrossFire Support (Maximum number of GPUs and CrossFire Bridge
Interconnect required)

4,
no

4,
no

4,
yes

4,
yes

2,
yes

2,
no

2,
no

2,
no

2,
no

Form
Factor

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual slot

Full
height, dual or single slot

Low
profile, single slot

Price

$299

$199 (2GB)
$229 (4GB)

$139

$89

$69

The entry-level R7 240 has 320 stream processors, with the clock
speed of the card running at up to 780 MHz. The card will be
available with either 1GB of GDDR5 or 2GB of DDR3 VRAM. Memory speed
has been clocked at 4.6 Gbps. The card draws only 30 watts. Outputs
are DVI-Dual Link, VGA, and HDMI 1.3.

The R7 250 is a double-wide card, with 384 stream processors. The
engine clock peaks at 1.05GHz. Memory configurations are the same as
the 240, with either 1GB of GDDR5 or 2GB of DDR3 VRAM and a 4.6Gbps
memory speed. The board draws 65W of power. Outputs are DVI-Dual
Link, VGA, and HDMI 1.3. The entry-level card will retail for less
than $89, according to AMD.

The R7 260X card has 896 stream processors. At 1.1Ghz, the engine
clock is a bit higher than the R7 250. Only one configuration of the
card is available, and it has 2GB of of GDDR5 with 6.5Gbps of speed.
A single six-pin power connector is required, as the card draws 115W
of power. The card has one DVI-D port and one DVI dual link
connector, a HDMI 1.3 port, and a DisplayPort. The R7 260X will sell
for $139.

The fourth card released today is the R9 270X. The card has 1,280
stream processors, with the engine clock speed at 1.06GHz. Two
configurations are available with 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 installed,
running at 5.6Gbps. Two six-pin power connectors are required, as the
card draws 180W. Two DVI dual link ports, a HDMI port, and a
DisplayPort provide monitor connectivity. The 2GB R9 270X is expected
to retail for $199, with the R9 270X with 4GB available for $229.

Finally the R9 280X boasts 2,048 stream processors, with an engine
clock up to 1GHz. The card mounts 3GB of GDDR5 memory, with a 6Gbps
speed. The card draws 250W, and requires one six-pin, and one
eight-pin power connector. As with the R9 270X, the R9 280X has Two
DVI dual link ports, a HDMI port, and a DisplayPort provide monitor
connectivity. The R9 280X will sell for $299.

The AMD Radeon R9 290 boasts 2,560 stream processors and a clock speed up to 947 MHz offering performance of 4.9 TFLOPS. It sticks with the same 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 512-bit wide memory interface as the top-end model and all other interfaces and specifications seem to be equal.

As you see, R9 290 aside, with the 200 series AMD is going to be
issuing new SKUs for their existing GPUs - Southern Islands and Sea
Islands.

The 2-year old Tahiti GPU is forming the basis of the R9 280X, in
what's essentially a lower clocked 7970GHz Edition. Meanwhile the
Pitcairn based 7870 gains PowerTune Boost capabilities and becomes
the R9 270X, and the Bonaire based 7790 also gains boost capabilities
while becoming the R7 260X. Finally Oland, finally gets a retail
desktop release with the R7 250 and R7 240, both aimed at OEMs.

The R9 280X and R9270X are based on the original GCN architecture,
while the Bonaire powered R7 260X is based on AMD?s revised GCN
architecture.

All of the cards receive new firmware, which allow them to drive
three displays (DVI/HDMI) off of one card. The R7 260X also gains
audio capabilities via AMD's TrueAudio technology.

AMD's new software and technology initiatives for the upcoming year
includes Mantle, AMD's low level graphics API for GCN. First
announced at AMD's public GPU 2014 technology showcase, Mantle is a
low level API designed to interact closely with AMD's GCN
architecture GPUs, and in doing so will let them achieve greater
performance than either Direct3D or OpenGL.

The first showcase game and engine for Mantle will be DICE's
Battlefield 4, which will receive Mantle support in an update in
December.

AMD will provide more details about Mantle next month at the 2013 AMD
Developer Summit.

AMD's Display Technology group has been working on making
improvements to Eyefinity surround setups. As is well known about the
7000 series, it was limited to 2 independent TMDS interface
(DVI/HDMI) displays at once. Unlike the packet based DisplayPort
interface, TMDS style interfaces adjust the clockspeed of the
interface itself to match the needs of the display. As a result while
you can drive a large number of DisplayPort interface monitors off of
a single shared clock generator, you need a dedicated clock generator
for each and every TMDS interface monitor. AMD only put 2 clock
generators for TMDS interfaces on their silicon, hence they could
only drive 2 such monitors at once.

With the 200 series this isn't changing but thanks to some firmware
and board level changes, with the 200 series AMD is now able to
attach multiple TMDS transmitters/interfaces to the same clock
generator, allowing one clock generator to be used to drive multiple
displays. As a result it?s now possible to drive up to 3 TMDS
interface displays off of a single 200 series card, with
restrictions.

The catch here is that these can?t be independent displays, and this
change is primarily intended towards enabling Eyefinity with
DVI/HDMI-only monitors. To utilize clock sharing and to drive 3 such
monitors off of a single card, all 3 monitors must be
timing-identical, which functionally speaking almost always requires
the monitors to be completely identical. Furthermore the sharing of
the clock generator can only be engaged/disabled upon boot, so the
3rd display cannot be hot-plugged and must be present at boot time.
Consequently this is by no means as unrestricted and easy as having
native support for 3 TMDS interface displays, but for Eyefinity it
will get the job done.

Of course, using the DisplayPort, either with a native monitor or
through an active DP-to-DVI/HDMI adapter, still allows the same fully
independent functionality as before.

AMD is also rolling out support for VESA Display ID 1.3 in their
newest drivers, for availability in the Radeon HD 7000 series and
above. Display ID 1.3 formalizes support for tiled displays, which
implement very high resolutions such as 4K in the form of multiple
lower resolution tiles that identify and behave like separate
monitors.

Ultimately tiled 4K displays are a transitionary technology as
they?ll be replaced with native (single tile) 4K displays next year
when suitable timing controllers hit the market, but in the interim
Display ID 1.3 is the formal solution to that problem.

AMD has also plans for supporting native 4K @ 60Hz monitors in the
future.

Finally, AMD?s Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) support is
getting an upgrade. DDMA allows for audio-capable HDMI/DisplayPort
monitors to coexist, and for each present themselves as an
independent sound sink. The idea behind this technology is to enable
uses where having discrete speakers dedicated to each monitor would
come in handy, such as video conferencing.

The final technical announcement coming out of AMD?s 2014 GPU product
showcase was TrueAudio. TrueAudio - enabled games can feature more
realistic environmental dynamics, a wider array of sound effects,
directional audio and more.

TrueAudio is a return to the concept of hardware accelerated audio
processing. Hardware accelerated audio processing in the PC space
essentially died with Windows Vista, which moved most of the Windows
audio stack into software. Now you can still do advanced 3D audio and
other effects in software by having the game engine itself do the
work.

TrueAudio is also a new way for AMD to differentiate from Intel and
NVIDIA. The feature is not going to be present on all 200 series
cards. The functionality is limited to 260X and 290X. 280X, 270X.

For TrueAudio, AMD is taking Tensilica's HiFi EP DSPs and integrates
them onto the die of their GPUs.

Tensilica's audio DSPs are programmable hardware allowing for
customized effects and processing to be done while still keeping the
size and power costs low. The underlying hardware is programmable in
C, while AMD for their part will be providing a TrueAudio API to
access the hardware with.

The trick here for AMD, more so than Mantle, is to get developers to
put TrueAudio to use.